New Deacons and Priests

New Deacons and Priests It’s a big weekend for our 2017 cohort of new Deacons and Priests – 18 in total. That number is up on last year (when we had 15) and reflects healthy national rises of 14% across the whole of the Church of England. Please pray for all of them, particularly if you are in a parish where one of the 18 is or will be based. Look out for full coverage of their retreat and ordination services on the new Diocesan website early next week as well as in your local and regional media. Fresh new website going live! The new Diocesan website will be up and running from today! The website went live at lunchtime but some online servers may take longer to recognise the new site than others. Try refreshing your screen or clearing your browser history to make sure you can view it if you can’t see it straightaway – if you still can’t see it, just wait a while longer and it should appear within 48 hours at most. In the meantime you should still see the old site until it swaps over. Note that all the website links in this update point to the new site. The fresh new look of the website reflects our Vision branding and is much easier to navigate than our old site. Read more here. New content will continue to be added and the website will continue to be refined as it settles down. Any useful comments you may have about functionality, content (or anything else) please email: [email protected], [email protected] or [email protected]

Harvest Appeal update The Harvest Appeal beneficiaries for 2017 have been announced – alongside the total for the Harvest Appeal in 2016. Read more here. Thy Kingdom Come Parishes across the whole Diocese took part in the exciting international 10 day prayer event led by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York. It all kicked off locally with a beacon launch service (one of 29 across the country) at Blackburn Cathedral attended by hundreds of people from all over the County. You can see highlights of the service here and here on our YouTube channel (remember to subscribe before you leave to get alerts about the latest videos as they are uploaded). Pictures from the service – including a great picture taken at the West Door of everyone who participated in the service) can be viewed on our Flickr site here. It was also a great encouragement to see around 10 seconds of local footage (out of the hundreds of hours of film submitted) making it into the short official video reviewing the whole of this year’s Thy Kingdom Come event, which was presented by Archbishop Justin.

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Manchester bomb attack This is the first communications update since the bomb attack in Manchester. In case you haven’t yet seen the coverage about the various responses to the attack across the Diocese, you can read more here, here and here. Congratulations to Alan An amazing 60 years of ministry across Lancashire were celebrated recently when Rev. Alan Reid, retired Vicar of Read, celebrated Communion at Whalley Abbey. His wife Muriel, family and friends from former parishes, clergy colleagues and members of the Whalley Abbey Fellowship gathered in the Chapel at the Abbey (which is the Diocesan Retreat and Conference Centre) for the regular Friday Communion service, which Alan has taken on and off throughout his long ministry. Bishop Philip’s mosque visit The Bishop of Burnley was invited to a Lancashire Mosque as Muslims celebrated Eid this past weekend. Bishop Philip was welcomed by the congregation at the Masjid Ibrahim mosque in Burnley, Lancashire where he passed on greetings from the churches of Burnley and across the County and spoke of how effective relationships across faith communities can continue to be built. Get Your Church Noticed After the success of the ‘Get Your Church Noticed’ communications and marketing advice day last year another event takes place this autumn. Ronnie Semley, Diocesan Communications Manager, will again be joined by his communications colleague Neil Pugmire, from Portsmouth Diocese to lead the day. The advice day is FREE and takes place on Saturday, October 7. Book your place via Eventbrite here.

Welcome banners The theme of this year’s Deanery Visitations was ‘welcome’ and the Archdeacons encouraged parishes to be open as much as possible during the period of Thy Kingdom Come and then beyond over the summer. Pre-designed welcome banners can still be ordered for inside or outside. The vinyl external banner (right) is just £45 and the internal pop-up banner is £99. Email [email protected] if you are interested, and to order. and finally … Twitter alert! If you are not a Twitter user you can stop here! For those of you who are, there is a lot of social media activity taking place in our parishes and schools and it would be great to ‘amplify’ it as much as possible. If you are using Twitter individually or as a group, church or school please make sure you follow @cofelancs, @whalleyabbey and @BDBofE on Twitter and include @cofelancs in your tweets (and/or the other handles if appropriate) so we see your activities in the notifications and can retweet. So for example, if you are at a Diocesan event at Whalley Abbey, tell us how it’s going using the handles @cofelancs and @whalleyabbey. And don’t forget if you are coming to the Cathedral for an event or meeting there is also a Twitter feed @bbcathedral Ronnie Semley Diocesan Communications Manager June 2017